Assets like downloadable ebooks or whitepapers: Check form completions or your downloads using Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, Act-On, or another marketing automation platform. Keeping in check that if your asset is indexed by search engines, users may be able to skip the submission form and download the asset directly.

Email: MailChimp, Marketo, Zoho and Eloqua can measure the number who opt out or unsubscribe from your content.

Sharing metrics help examine

what content is being shared

who is sharing it

where is it being shared

how are they sharing it

SharedCount can help quantify retweets, “likes” and social media shares of your content.

Engagement metricsare one of the key points on understanding whether your content relates with the readers or not.

Is there any action after they read your content?

If yes, are the consistently taking action?

Website or blog: User's session duration can be measured through Google Analytics and it can also tell as to how deep has a user been in your site

Social media: To check social impact of your content, tools like Klout can be handy to have

Lead metrics: Converting your leads successfully and keeping your existing leads intactbecomes a priority in your marketing plan. Tools like Eloqua, Marketo, Act-On and similar marketing automation platforms can assist in this area.

Production Metrics comes in where you have to internally assess your content operations.

Be it measuring how your team is performing against your editorial calendar with deadlines and goals. Keeping up on the time taken to turn a content idea into a published content piece and also on the number of content pieces being published in a week or month. Content team has to measure these things on their own over time. I suggest using a simple Google drive sheet to track this.

Cost metrics

The most important metrics of them all as it helps in calculating return on investment for content marketing. What's the cost of delivering anything related to content be it blog post, infographics, white paper or a email campaign? The costing should not just involve the freelance budget, staff time but also design fees, stock images being used and cost involved for paid distribution channels.

You don't have to measure everything at once. Just start with measuring the metrics which help you take business decisions.